Bloom heralds benefits

The CEOs of both Symantec and Veritas took to the stage at the latter’s main user conference to talk about the benefits of their proposed US$13.5 billion merger. John Thompson of Symantec and Gary Bloom of Veritas both reassured users that the combined company will be a success.

The CEOs of both Symantec and Veritas took to the stage at the latter’s main user conference to talk about the benefits of their proposed US$13.5 billion merger. John Thompson of Symantec and Gary Bloom of Veritas both reassured users that the combined company will be a success. The two were speaking at the Veritas Vision conference in San Francisco, US, last month — the largest Veritas user conference of the year. In his keynote, Bloom told end users that the two companies’ products both address the same issue: data protection. While Veritas has been mainly concerned with protecting end users from data risks such as software crashes or storage system problems, Symantec protects data from threats such as viruses or hacker attacks. “This is the convergence around information security and availability,” Bloom said, “Our strategy is to drive performance, availability, automation, and security of your information technology environment,” he added. In his speech, Thompson highlighted the need to “bridge the divide” between security device management, storage device management and network device management, telling delegates that “information is in fact the currency of our age and it has become invaluable”. The merger has been received coolly by financial markets, with Symantec’s share price falling more than 40% since it was announced last December. However, both executives argued that consolidation is the way forward for the industry, highlighting other high-profile mergers, including Oracle’s US$10.3 billion PeopleSoft takeover and Adobe’s proposed US$3.4 billion purchase of Macromedia). In the Middle East, Veritas is looking to hold the regional version of Veritas Vision on May 26, which will give the company’s estimated 1000-plus users in the region an opportunity to meet senior executives. Peter Parker, vice president for sales in emerging territories at Veritas, told IT Weekly last month that Middle East end users will benefit from the Symantec deal, with the merger entity ramping up both its resources and focus in the region. “The level of investment that we have here [in the region] is going to be significantly more than we have now. There will be a significant investment in people here,” he said.